Collaboration in Your Writing Classroom: Team Projects

At the recent TYCA West Conference in Mesa Arizona, October 2014, Levi Martin from the University of Texas at El Paso presented on "Creating Collaborative Spaces that Empower Students in Collaborative Writing Practices." His presentation was lively and enjoyable. To set the stage for this instructor, he is a doctoral candidate who primarily teaches Technical Writing, Professional Writing, and occasional composition courses for the university.

Martin creates short lessons and places students into small teams to apply the lesson. He first defines collaboration as joint writing to help students understand what the term means in this situation. Then he has students write a team paper on Success Strategies.

Factors to consider when creating these collaborative projects are motivation, time with the team, having the right tools, developing team contracts, and having multiple conferences with the instructor, both team and individual.

Martin bases his team projects on Achievement Goal Theory, Walters, 2004, 236. He believes that higher motivation equals higher achievement. Once students graduate from college, their future professional needs will require collaborative skills in the workplace. Therefore, team work has high applicability and relevance to students.

Martin also states that he doesn't call collaborative writing "group work." He calls it "teamwork," which has a better connotation. Other ideas for names to call this type of collaboration are agencies, partners, think tank. I mentioned that the term "partners" has not always met with a positive connotation in my classroom, and the others seemed to agree.

When creating a writing center for students, he named the tutors "writing consultants." This term similarly gave students more of a desire to go see someone for assistance.

Martin favors increased student involvement. When students have a voice in creating the assignments, this practice creates a deeper understanding of the work and greater sense of ownership. Discussion on the goals of the assignment also opens the conversation to discuss the assignment and its purpose in a more directed, useful environment.

Time with team members is essential. Martin claims that after the initial honeymoon, students need time to work with and get to know one another in non-threatening context, the opportunity to learn strengths and weaknesses of the members, and time for peer review. The instructor is the catalyst. Martin grades the comments peers make on paper, not the draft itself. He gives 20% of the final grade to the comments made on other students drafts and 80% to the student's own final version.

This instructor also uses tools. Martin uses "the Google."

• Google Drive and Google Docs provide (a)synchronous platforms
• Instructor can join the conversation in a non-threatening way
• Students can compose, edit, revise collaboratively without being in the same place
• All changes and comments are recorded for both students and instructor
• He also uses color-coded writing. Each student is assigned a different color for text.
• Presence is key. No matter the software used, the instructor needs to be present.
• Students need to know the instructor is aware and active in development of the work.
• Instructor presence develops accountability and builds motivation.

Students develop the contracts for team projects.

• In conjunction with developing guidelines, students have ownership of the process they use to complete the work.
• Students develop their own responsibilities, dates, and repercussions.
• All team members write the contract, which gives exposure to a new genre of writing.
• Writing the contract increases student awareness of the process and responsibilities.

Both group and individual student conferences are vital to team project development and success. Class time works well for group conferences, according to Martin. He uses office hours for individual one-on-one conferences. The instructor needs to be aware of up-to-date progress on the project. 

Open communication is also vital. Students need to be able to contact the instructor with any issues, questions, and concerns regarding the class.Limit rules to correspondence within reason. Work to get students talking to you. The more comfortable they are, the better questions students ask.

Martin created a Twitter account for his students so they could ask him short questions for quick answers. This type of easy access keeps the instructor from giving out personal contact information. 

If you are interested in developing team projects with your class, I hope you will read through Martin's ideas here and take what works for you. It is my personal opinion that these ideas would work best for second year college students, but team projects can also be used for first year and even developmental classes. I wish you all the best as you challenge yourself to try these team projects with your students. Data shows that classrooms doing project learning activities have higher retention as students get involved with one another and develop accountability.

New Developmental Education White Paper Coming Soon

The TYCA (Two-Year College English Association)  conference brought to my attention a new Developmental Education white paper that is coming out soon. I will devote this blog to information about that document. Be watching for it in the TETYC or other NCTE (National Council of Teachers of English) journals.

The first topic broached in this session was that the national completion agenda "rests on good intentions but flawed assumptions." Reform is imposed, under resourced, and hasty. Such institutional and disciplinary divisions often lead to disarray and difficulty.

A Case Study: Florida SB1720 is one such hastily drawn piece of legislation set into effect in 2013. This law imposes the following, according to the white paper:

• exempts recent high school graduates and others from being required to take developmental education courses and from mandatory placement testing
• forbids standard semester format for developmental courses
• impacts curriculum, advising, workload, departmental structures, college-level instruction. Colleges were forced to hire more advisers and left no funding to hire more faculty.

Other Program Responses to  Legislative Interventions

• Some California admissions departments have turned developmental students away.
• Placement has been impacted.
• Program design has been impacted:
• mainstreaming with accelerated learning
• module courses developed
• studio courses developed
• stretch courses developed
• compression of programs

Recommendations for Institutional Administration and Educators

1. Include developmental instructors in designing reform.
2. Initiate improvement to developmental education programs and course through research-based pilots.
3. Prioritize evidence from local assessments and research on student success. (What works in Kansas may not work in Arizona.)
4. Assess students' needs for developmental education and readiness for credit-bearing courses based on multiple pieces of evidence including student writing.
5. Eliminate multiple-choice exit tests.
6. Fund and develop strong developmental education departments.
7. Support professional development for developmental educators.
8. More ideas were offered, but I didn't capture them all. Please eagerly await the real completed report for full and accurate information.

Anyone interested in the NCTE's Policy Analysis Initiative can follow this Web site for further information.  Also, the CCCC (Conference on College Composition and Communication) has a statement on preparing teachers of college writing. They ask, "How do we teach full-time and adjunct faculty how to teach for our institution?" The CCCC recommend that colleges offer training to show all English faculty how our institution approaches writing.

As a college, English teachers here can read the list and see areas of strength and places for continued growth opportunity at Yavapai College. Personally, I feel we are doing better than many colleges, and am grateful for thse potential of hiring a Developmental Education administrator in the near future. Colleges need to ask, "What issues are most pressing here?"

One state represented at the conference, Texas, said they have Reverse Transfer Agreements in their state (RMAs). When I asked for clarification on what an RMA is, I was told that their college tracks down students who transfer to another institution before they graduate from the university. The college gives credit for classes taken at the university toward completing a community college degree. They transfer back, and in so doing, students earn associates degrees, and the community college gets credit for completion. Do we have a system like this in Arizona? If not, perhaps this is an idea that Arizona colleges can seek to get instituted into our system.